The present invention relates generally to a system for reading bar code labels and more particularly to a system for identifying bar code labels affixed to nuclear fuel rods.
Bar code labels are temporarily affixed to nuclear reactor fuel rod cladding tubes. This enables the fuel rods to be easily tracked during various manufacturing and quality control inspection steps. The bar code labels have been read by manually passing a hand-held optical bar code reader across the bar code portion of the bar code label, longitudinally along the tube.
The bar code labels are wrapped only partially around the cladding tube leaving a space on the tube which facilitates later removal of the bar code label. Also, the bar code label may contain an alphanumeric coded portion permitting visual identification of the tube, as well as the bar code portion permitting optical scanner identification. Thus, operators had to manually rotate some of the rods about their longitudinal axes to reveal the bar code portion before manually passing the hand-held reader across the bar code label.
What is needed is an identification system which will automatically position a nuclear fuel rod and read its bar code label regardless of the longitudinal rotational position of its bar code portion.